25 Best Albums of 2019

A star was certainly born (or, more accurately, reborn) in 2018 when Lady Gaga’s movie soundtrack made waves wild enough to spawn surf tournaments. Just a year later, the best albums of 2019 are similarly catapulting certain radio juggernauts toward the cosmos.

Over the past year, the pop sphere has proven it’s no longer a space exclusively for moody tunes or trop-house fire. Khalid and Maggie Rogers kept us grooving with their latest LPs, Pink went wild with a genre-spanning experiment and Billie Eilish captured the spirit of a generation with her excellent (and beautifully eerie) When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?